My First Time
by SwordSkill
Summary: A taxi bound for the theater. Two girls we know. A story of violation, blood, and choice. "When was your first time?" One-shot. Post-series.


**My First Time**  


"_Théâtre Marigny, s'il vous plaît._"

Two side doors slammed shut and the white light on the taxi's roof turned orange. The car began to roll.

The blonde behind the driver's seat fitted perfectly in her black cocktail dress, a scarlet pashmina draped around her otherwise bare shoulders. Her hair was up in a classic French twist, a chopstick holding it in place, and a small purse was in her hand. The younger girl sitting at the other end was dressed more elegantly in her ivory corset evening gown, her short hair down in bold waves and a delicate bead bag resting on her lap.

The middle-aged cabbie in front with the messy moustache and the thick eyebrows squinted as he made a turn that brought them to the main street, cars filling it with patterns of horns beeping and lights flashing. Eight-thirty in the night and life was only starting in Paris.

The light from the lanterns chased each other on Mireille's face. The window panes were still wet from the drizzle earlier, the droplets sliding down and making shadows on her skin.

"How long do you think would this take?" she asked.

Kirika's eyes were still directed at the front. "Ten minutes, maybe? He's alone in an upper-box seat; it'll be pretty easy."

Mireille leaned over and tapped the driver's head rest. "Today is the thirteenth of July, _non_?"

"It is, miss."

She was addressing Kirika again. "It'll be your first Bastille Day tomorrow."

Her friend turned and gave her a funny look as the car rolled over a hump. "So I've gathered. _Fête Nationale_."

"You think we can get the day off?"

"I thought we were flying to Nigeria tomorrow."

"Unfortunately." 

"Then I don't understand."

Mireille had taken out her compact and was powdering her nose. She could see the cabbie looking at them curiously from his rearview mirror, averting his eyes when she snapped the compact shut. "Just a thought, really. The downside of being self-employed is that you're excluded from national holidays."

"Only if you choose to."

Mireille gave her a sideway glance, the beginning of a smile on her lips. "We're contracted, remember."

"We chose to be contracted."

The smile never appeared. Mireille rested her elbow against the side of the door, looking out. A lengthy pause ensued before she spoke again. "When was your first time?"

"To what?"

"To kill a person."

The taxi squeaked into a halt as the traffic light turned red. People began milling over the white pedestrian lines.

"I'm afraid I can't remember very well. I was very young."

"Mm. I remember mine very well. It's difficult not to." Mireille chuckled. "I wish it weren't so."

"Oh."

"But it couldn't be helped. 'Indeed, the law of nature teaches us to kill our neighbor, and such is the practice all over the world.'"

"Machiavelli?"

"Voltaire."

"Oh."

"I was barely sixteen then; I had never even owned a gun. It was really a very messy business. Do you remember the Babineaux hit?"

"Down in the slums, two months ago. Yes."

"I just moved in there at that time, into a crummy little apartelle, and I learned much from the dregs of society during poker night. How to perforate your knives, how to slather them in manure, how to do the Russian knee-pop trick, how to choose your targets from the way they walk...that sort of thing. The old-timers were an international lot and were mostly undocumenteds in hiding, so they'd been to places."

"And you were-?"

"I started as a pickpocket then I shifted into being a small-time fixer between the gambling syndicates and the whorehouses. Those days were really hand-to-mouth. From aristocrat to untouchable to petty bourgeosie. The Marxists would have a field day with the story of my life."

Traffic jam. The cabbie was drumming his fingers against the steering wheel nervously, his eyes on the rearview mirror.

"One afternoon one of the brothel girls took me aside and told me to cancel a night I had set up between her and one of the regular boys. She said he never paid before or after he had his fun and the house was going to give her the boot if it kept up. Then she showed me the money she had pooled and told me she'd give me half now and half later if I made sure he never came back."

Kirika was staring at her intently.

"I took it in a heartbeat. I figured I could do the deed, get my returns, tell the syndicate he belonged to about her, and get even more returns, then I'd have enough to disappear from the place. When she asked if I had a gun and I said no, she laughed and handed me one. It was an old Colt revolver and only half of the barrel was loaded. I had three shots. She asked me if I had ever fired a gun. I said yes, when I had picked up and played with one of the old-timers' automatic - it didn't have a magazine and I had forgotten to check if there was still an extra bullet chambered."

"So I went that night with the revolver in my pocket and my bowie knife in my left boot. They were supposed to meet in a nearby motel, ten o'clock, Room 28; I can still remember the confounded numbers. I was punctual. I knocked, he said it was open, I opened it, and he was stark naked. And monstrously ready. I closed the door behind me and told him that Papillon couldn't make it."

There was a silence. Mireille cleared her throat before continuing and a golden lock had fallen off from her coiffure. "Apparently, he thought I had to do as the replacement. I was young. I was stupid. When he approached me, I took the gun out and fired without aiming. The first two went wide; he ducked from the third. He knocked the gun out of my hand, dragged me to bed, and he was on top of me before I could recover. He was very violent. He was all hands and tongues."

"Mireille..."

"I managed to grab my knife from my boot while he was trying to unbutton my pants. I stabbed him below the ribs, felt the perforated holes catch flesh, and yanked it out. Blood everywhere. He howled and rolled over the bed and slipped to the floor. I jumped up and threw the bedspread over him. I stabbed and stabbed until the thrashing figure underneath became smaller and stiller and just...stopped."

Mireille's eyes were far away and her knuckles had turned white from clutching her purse.

"Do you what it feels like afterwards?" she finally said in an effort to control her voice. "At first you feel like a tight ball of rubber, as tight as your hold around your knife, like a death grip, like nothing could pry it away from you. You're so full of rage, so raw, and you're curled up so tight you're shaking like a lunatic. Then suddenly it's as if your eyes open for the first time and you see all the blood. You see the body, and it's like being hit by a sledgehammer at the back of your head. There's a slain man in the room and his blood is all over you. Everything rushes back, how he tried to rape you and how you knifed him to death, and then disappears just as quickly, as if you had just gotten back to your body. Then you realize it's real and the rubber ball releases. The cold comes in. Winter in one room. Ice worming into your joints, into the marrow of your bones, freezing everything. You've killed a man."

The car violently swerved, shoving the two passengers to the right. They were in an deserted alley now, in a slice of space sandwiched between two dark buildings far from the main roads. All the window panes were broken and there were no lights. The taxicab slowed down to a stop.

"Hey!" Mireille leaned forward, hair ruined and her voice holding an edge. The man in front was hastily extricating himself from his seatbelt. "Where the hell are we?!"

Kirika assessed the situation. "This is not the way to the theater."

"It certainly isn't!" Mireille grabbed something from her purse. "And I have a good idea as to why!"

The cabbie suddenly turned around with an automatic in hand into the perfect position for Kirika to score a shot on his forehead. He collapsed over the passenger seat at the front, blood seeping into the synthetic leather upholstery.

There was a small pause. Then Mireille unlocked her door and threw it open. Kirika was pulling out a piece of neatly-folded paper from her bag, dropping her Beretta back as she did. She passed it to Mireille, who had opened the door to where the man's head lay.

"It's definitely our man." Mireille rolled the wounded head to face her and peeled off the fake moustache and the eyebrows, revealing the same mid-fortyish face atop an Armani suit that was in the snapshot that Kirika handed to her. "Hugues Dupuis, con artist, if that's even his real name. Wanted in three countries. He must have caught wind that we were going to do him in at the theater." She looked up at Kirika. "It's a good thing you noticed him so conveniently making rounds in our street in a taxicab, making sure we would hail him. Of course, that means we'll have to do a trace on our leak - we'll do it after Nigeria."

Kirika got out of the car to help Mireille drag the corpse out and throw it against the dead-end wall. The body landed on the piles of garbage with a hollow thud. Kirika returned to the car as a lookout as Mireille took a box of matches from her purse.

"Mireille?"

There was the sound of a match scratching and being lit. "Yes?"

Kirika turned around to face her. "I understand that the topic for the taxi conversation was to scare him into doing something impulsive. I understand it's psychological strategy and everything, but..."

"But what?"

"Your story...was it true?"

Mireille stared at her for an eternity. Then she blew the match's flame out and watched the wisp of smoke curl up into nothingness. "I'm afraid so."

"I am very sorry."

"It's all right. I don't look like it, but I've been through a lot. First time's the hardest, but you get used to it eventually." She fought to give a small wry smile. "The wonders of makeup, you see. And some accessorizing."

"I am sorry I was not there."

There was a pause and Mireille rubbed her eyes, her voice muffled. "This was a long time ago, way before you and me, Kirika. It doesn't matter."

"Mireille, are you all right?"

"I'm fine - smoke got into my eyes."

Kirika moved towards Mireille, who was fumbling for another match. "I can't remember the first time I killed, but I do recall one of my earliest. I was very, very young then. Before I pulled the trigger, she asked me to take care of her daughter. This was before you worked in the streets. There had already been a you and me."

Mireille was biting her lip and it took a long time before she could strike another match. She tossed it into the man's chest, where it caught fire on the tweed jacket and began to spread. Then she stepped back. Kirika stood beside her.

"I left." Mireille watched the pyre. "I left the motel with the knife and the gun. I left him there rolled up in the bedspread. I didn't collect my other half from Papillon. I just had to leave. I took my belongings and moved out. I couldn't sleep for days. I've heard so many stories from the old-timers but when you do it yourself you never want to hear another story like that again." Her eyes flickered like the flames and the shadows danced on her face. "Eventually I had to defend myself and it became easier to kill. Papillon must have said something about me because the syndicate sent some people to track me down. At the same time I realized that I didn't know any trade other than the street, and one thing led to another. I needed to feed myself. I bought my own gun. I used it. More than once." She blinked. "And I've never stopped since. I kept moving out from place to place like a fugitive - and I was. I changed my hair so many times that you wouldn't have recognized me two years ago because I had it shaved off. It was only recently that I thought it was finally safe enough to let it grow back for a longer time."

"And you stopped moving."

Mireille stared into the fire, the ends of her lips lifting. "Logistics, Kirika. It's a little hard to keep moving when there's two of you."

Kirika looked at her.

The smile finally came. "I think the underground can do without us for a day, don't you think?" Mireille lifted her eyebrows, her eyes bright. She pulled out the chopstick and let her hair frame her face. "Tomorrow's Bastille Day; you have to see the parade. Nigeria will always be there."

Kirika appeared contemplative. "I would like that very much."

Tears shimmered in Mireille's eyes as she laughed. The hungry flames licked the corpse and engulfed it beyond recognition, burning with rage.

**end**


End file.
